Transnational Feminist Activism: Impact on State Policy for Gender-Based Violence. A Case of Busia County in Kenya

This study is an ethnographic research that studied how feminist activists appropriate online social media platforms such as Twitter in addition to other contemporary platforms as a site for mobilization and building of online communities. The study argues that feminist activists employ cross-border solidarity. Care, and archival practices to generate radical feminist movements to counter the entrenched forms of patriarchal violence. The chapter, therefore, reiterates the use of feminist solidarities and movements, and in the digital age, the digital space to push for political inclusion and mobilization of the community. Through the virtual reach aided by new technologies, feminist narratives and theories are circulated amongst online users both locally, regionally, and internationally. This enables them to break silences, resist respectability politics, generate critical discourse, engage in transnational feminist solidarities, and cultivate care. To explain how these networks coordinate, the study describes and analyzes the international feminist activism with the use of digital feminist counterpublic sphere as a theoretical framework that facilitates and sustains discourses that challenge constant patriarchal violence and generates radical feminist politics. The findings suggests the prevalence of gender-based violence in Busia County due to the patriarchal dominance and lack of coordination among key stakeholders and enforcement agencies in curbing the vice. The research recommends a more proactive and coordinated approach in the fight against gender-based violence and the utilization of various social media platforms to raise awareness and report cases for prompt actions.